ABSTRACT
Most scholarly editors, in their discussions of theory and procedure, have focused on public texts - poems, stories, novels, essays and drama scripts prepared by authors for print or performance. Less consideration has been given to the editing of private papers: letters, journals, diaries, fragments, trial drafts and aborted manuscripts. Theodore Dreiser was not a confessional diarist or a particularly meditative one; in most entries the style is workmanlike and the text often no more than a log of a day's activities. Dreiser had begun his diary in longhand in New York on the day he received his invitation from the Soviet government. He had continued to make entries on the voyage to Europe and during stops in Paris and Berlin, on his way to Moscow. With his handwritten revisions and augmentations, and his cutting and pasting, Dreiser seems to have been bringing the diary toward publication in some form.
